


Birthday Party

by starghost



Category: Psych
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-30
Updated: 2016-01-30
Packaged: 2018-05-17 05:45:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,017
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5856454
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/starghost/pseuds/starghost
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>lol I wrote Psych fic once. Post "Poker? I barely know her!" and Lassiter's birthday. Originally posted to LJ circa 2007.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Birthday Party

"Shawn, everyone knows it's not polite to show up empty-handed to a birthday party." Gus looked around. After running wildly away, Juliet had called Shawn and promised that the criminals had all agreed to play nice for an hour, and they had reluctantly returned. "Even those convicts whose mothers taught them nothing else know that much."  
  
Gus accidently made eye contact with a large lady convict who smiled and waved at him. She held up her gift, wrapped in shiny red paper, and shrugged.  
  
"Please, Gus. I'm not completely unprepared," Shawn replied. He patted his back pocket. "I have plenty of singles for him to use at the strip club later."  
  
Gus glared at him worriedly. How Gus could combine worry with glaring, Shawn didn't know, but he did it well.  
  
"What?" Shawn said. "Lassi's too uptight. He could use a good lapdance to loosen him up before he shoots someone he's not supposed to," Shawn said. He looked at the way Juliet was still standing by the front door, talking through it. "Like poor Jules. Or me."  
  
"Could you not joke about Lassiter at a strip club? I'm going to have nightmares." Gus looked steadfastly ahead again as they approached the house. The chief sat on the porch, talking on the phone, as two of the nicer looking convicts -- nicer being relative; they had no piercings and only three tattoos between them -- drank their beers and waited to see if Lassiter was ever coming out again.  
  
"Oh, like it'd be any worse than the first time I took you. 'How am I supposed to give her the money?'" Shawn said, throwing his hands around and pitching his voice higher. "'Don't get me a lapdance, Shawn, I'll kill you. Shawn, oh God, she threw her top in my face, what do I do with this?' You hoot, you holler, and you stick a twenty in your mouth so she'll come grab it with her teeth."  
  
"I know that now," Gus said. "But I was sixteen with a fake ID that looked like Urkel."  
  
"You looked kind of like Urkel."  
  
"I did not!"  
  
"Didn't what?" the chief asked, hanging up her phone. "Or would I rather not know?"  
  
"You'd rather not know, ma'am," Gus said politely, at the same time that Shawn blurted out, "Gus used to look like Urkel."  
  
"Mm-hmm," the chief said. She looked at them both silently. Gus shifted his weight uncomfortably.  
  
"Guys," Juliet called out, and the three of them looked up the steps at her. "I can't get him to come back out."  
  
Gus looked at Shawn, who had a ponderous expression on his face. It was an expression a few notches down the danger scale from "Let's bet all our money on roulette" but just above "I'm kidnapping my neighbor's dog".  
  
"I'm on it," Shawn said. He strode up to the front door, and without any preparation, opened it. Juliet nearly jumped back three feet in astonishment, but Shawn barely acknowledged her and strode in, saying over his shoulder, "How do you get on without me, honestly?"  
  
If any of them responded, Shawn didn't hear it. He stepped softly through the house, soft enough not to be obtrusive, but not so quietly that he would sneak up on Lassiter. Lassiter would definitely hear his footfalls, and surely had heard his low whistle at the size of that television. What a television. Shawn started to walk right up to it, planning to crouch down in front of it and treat it like the altar that it was, but before he got more than a step into the room, he could see Lassi's reflection, sitting in the recliner. He slouched, his head resting on his hand, and stared off into the depths of the blank screen.  
  
"Lassi?" Shawn said, and walked up closer to the chair. Lassiter didn't move. Shawn stared at him, and thought briefly of checking for a pulse, but Lassiter sighed heavily.  
  
"I like my house," he said, finally. "You may not think I like anything, but I like my house. I have good memories in this house." Shawn looked around. Photos hung on the wall above the couch, different people at different ages. Lassiter and his wife, Shawn assumed, maybe that was Lassi when he was younger, that one could be his mother and father.  
  
There was a spot on the doorframe, at the edge where one room bled into the next, where the paint was chipping from the warm tawny color the hall was painted to a plain white, what it must have been when he moved in. Shawn could picture, if he tried hard enough, Lassi and his wife as a new young couple moving in, her talking about paint colors while he looked over case files. Maybe she made him help paint. Lassi, painting. Shawn smiled at the thought, imagining Lassi's face if she got paint on his shirt.  
  
He looked back at Lassi in the chair.  
  
"Why would I think you don't like anything?" Shawn asked. Lassi looked up sideways at him, his eyebrow raised. "You like fishing."  
  
"I do like fishing," Lassiter said.  
  
"You know there are people outside who like you," Shawn said. Lassiter's face didn't change, and Shawn put his hands up. "Okay, they may not admit they like you, but there are people outside who have presents for you. Presents, beer, and good intentions. At least go outside and have one beer."  
  
Lassiter didn't move. Shawn leaned on the arm of the chair.  
  
"One beer. Juliet's afraid you're going to kill her for this. Accepting one drink is as good as a peace pipe, and it's hard to work with someone if they're dead or afraid of you." Lassi looked at him again, and Shawn made his poutiest face. "Carly. Come on."  
  
"I hate you, Spencer," Lassi said, but he followed it up with a long-suffering sigh before pushing out of the chair. Shawn nearly bounced at his success.  
  
"Of course you do," he said as Lassiter lead the way out of the house, "but how do you feel about strip clubs?"


End file.
